The heat seeking equiptment was NOT moot. It was cool that night, and cool for the rest of the week. If Phil died there, the heat seeking equipment should have found him easily even through the foilage.
The ground was very hot, some said areas of the ridge reached 115 that day, that DOES impact utility of the heat seeking equipment. He may have passed away not long after the run started. They may have initially focused the search farther south in areas of planned route. We will know more with the watch data. MOO only.
It doesn't affect the heat seeking equipment though. It cooled down after 6pm - way before the heet seeking equiptment was deployed. It was cool every day after, cool enough that the body's heat signature would have been found. I can quote studies here if you'd like. It was a RARE hot 106 day that day that didn't repeat itself. It was hot the two days proceeding that day only (not that that matters, but just adding that fact).
In support of terracotta here, I am certainly no expert, but have done a bit of research on this topic. Even if poor PK passed away immediately, these types of cameras could have detected his body for several days, even in the heat conditions that existed in July. There is also a type of (commonly available) camera that is most effective about 9-12 days after passing. This is all from my memory and I would assume the type of camera or location of their aerial search must not have allowed them to find PK this way.
PK worked for PG&E and could have been on Poole property access road before. To me it seems like such a wrong way to have run given the 45 minute time crunch. 12:35pm ETA was already putting PK past his wife's desired Noon to 12:30pm, so if PK was planning on a quick run then depart to Stockton with ETA 12:35pm, it seems unlikely that he would deviate a mile out of preplanned route. Plus, PK seemed tech savvy, expert with outdoor environment, experienced, new of heat that day- like when he got out of his car....not much temperature increase in 45 minutes, so he was aware of how hot it was on trail. If Poole property is owned by Alameda County, why was it not an active search area or even route for search vehicles? Not making sense.
Plus, PK was on a game trail which I wonder if there were motion sensor game cameras?
The East Bay Regional Park District purchased the Poole property in 1990 and it is in "land bank" status. The North Ridge trail ends on that property. A house on the property is an EBRPD security residence and an EBRPD maintenance supervisor lives there on site.
Volunteer search efforts were also called off after a week (to resume later but mostly via canvassing neighbors, not hiking and searching) under the theory that he had to be in a hard to reach area (e.g., accessible only by professionals with safety gear). In reality, he was on a well-maintained fire trail until the last 200 feet, at which point he was on a community trail, and a few feet from that, under the tree. Hardly inaccessible by volunteers.
The volunteers came to within LESS THAN 200 ft. of the body as shown in Strava search.
Well, that's still quite a distance. Especially if he was under foliage.
Thermal imaging easily sees under foilage. We are at a loss to explain why it failed in this instance. This is something that needs to be analyzed if we are to reliably use this technology to find lost hikers, you would agree?
https://twitter.com/melissacolorado...ody-found-grateful-for-search-effort/2623391/
